Cook fire, 26 September 2025 Cook
The fire started on 26 September 2025 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 21,094 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 298th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1742 with a page). Number 195 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Cook · 2019Cook · 2023Cook · 2018Cook · 2023
- Burnt area
- 21,094ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 26days
- 26 Sept 2025 – 21 Oct 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 26 Sept
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 670
- in a single hotspot: 240 MW
- Danger at start
- 31
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 304MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.2 mm on 29 Oct.
This area had burned before
99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,548 ha in 2016, 9,261 ha in 2017, 983 ha in 2018, 17,375 ha in 2019, 1,321 ha in 2020, 4,330 ha in 2021, 3,116 ha in 2022, 6,996 ha in 2023, 5,336 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 20,890 ha that had burned before.
- 16,737 ha Cook fire, August 2019 95,928 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,521 ha Cook fire, August 2023 5,652 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 247 ha Cook fire, August 2018 37,253 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Cook where it started21,444 ha reached on 26 Sept0.2 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 0.13 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
The weather day by day
ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 Sept | 30.1 °C | 31 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 27 Sept | 33.7 °C | 29 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 28 Sept | 36.8 °C | 21 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 29 Sept | 36.0 °C | 22 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 30 Sept | 36.0 °C | 14 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 1 Oct | 37.3 °C | 15 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 2 Oct | 38.2 °C | 15 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 3 Oct | 37.7 °C | 16 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 4 Oct | 34.9 °C | 24 % | 46 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 48 |
| 5 Oct | 32.7 °C | 22 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 6 Oct | 32.1 °C | 28 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 7 Oct | 30.3 °C | 47 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 8 Oct | 33.4 °C | 44 % | 49 km/h | 0.9 mm | High 25 |
| 9 Oct | 34.4 °C | 42 % | 44 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 27 |
| 10 Oct | 36.3 °C | 30 % | 36 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 36 |
| 11 Oct | 33.7 °C | 31 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 12 Oct | 35.0 °C | 31 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 13 Oct | 35.3 °C | 35 % | 41 km/h | 3.8 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 14 Oct | 32.4 °C | 52 % | 42 km/h | 4.0 mm | Low 7 |
| 15 Oct | 32.3 °C | 41 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 16 Oct | 32.0 °C | 47 % | 52 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 24 |
| 17 Oct | 32.3 °C | 35 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 18 Oct | 34.4 °C | 25 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 19 Oct | 36.0 °C | 19 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 20 Oct | 34.5 °C | 24 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 21 Oct | 35.3 °C | 25 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 22 Oct after | 36.5 °C | 20 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 23 Oct after | 37.1 °C | 18 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 24 Oct after | 36.7 °C | 25 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 25 Oct after | 36.2 °C | 27 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 26 Oct after | 36.9 °C | 27 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 27 Oct after | 38.6 °C | 22 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 28 Oct after | 37.3 °C | 29 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 29 Oct after | 37.4 °C | 31 % | 40 km/h | 5.2 mm | Moderate 17 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 3 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 83 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 32: 2.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
Detections table · 670Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 95,928 haCook28 August 2019 · 80 days · 13 km away
- 29,346 haCook12 August 2023 · 14 days · 25 km away
- 25,008 haCook17 July 2025 · 46 days · 25 km away
- 50,188 haCook24 September 2018 · 20 days · 27 km away
- 37,253 haCook8 August 2018 · 29 days · 28 km away
- 36,678 haCook2 October 2021 · 46 days · 30 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Cook fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 September 2025 to 21 October 2025 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 September 2025 to 15 October 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 21,094 hectares (210.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Cook (21,444 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, class Very high.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Australia (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
Where to verify it
A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.
Emergency number: 000 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
Does something look wrong on this page?
This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.
Report an error
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 26 September 2025 to 15 October 2025. 670 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
Where this data comes from
The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.